Oil News: Saudi Pipeline Outage and China Draws Keep Buyers in Control
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Key Points:
- Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline remains offline, removing a 4 million bpd route around the Strait of Hormuz.
- China drew roughly 640,000 bpd from storage in August as refinery runs exceeded available crude supplies.
- Saudi’s pipeline loss and China’s inventory draws keep the oil supply story bullish and buyers in control.
The market keeps waiting for somebody to put oil back on the water. Nobody has. The Saudi pipeline bypass is still down. The Strait of Hormuz dropped to four vessel transits Monday. Washington is draining a reserve that has not been this low since 1982. China is pulling crude out of storage faster than it can import. None of that has changed since Friday and the list of things that can go wrong is getting longer, not shorter.